ORIGINAL: mopar2ya
I bet one could summon up the power to dip into the single digits with the proper amount of foot applied...
Well, it depends how you drive it and where you drive it. I hardly consider C&D to be drivers who like to feather cars (especially muscle cars) and they did very well with it at 19mpg. The truth of the matter is you can get the worst mileage with anything if you drive it to do so.
ORIGINAL: Jeremiah 29:11
According to the Detroit News, Chrysler spent a mere $151 million on the program, going from concept car to Job One in fewer than 21 months. There was, unfortunately, nowhere to hide the weight. At 4,140 pounds, the Challenger's poundage is the consequence of the project's short development and low budget (taking weight out of a car costs a lot of time and money).
I am not sure I agree with all of that. The Ford GT40 and GT, my favorite of all cars but too expensive for me was built in 15 months totally from scratch and normally that would take 50-55 months. About the only thing that was somewhat designed was the 5.4L engine but only in basic form. There were still major changes done to it. As for development time reducing weight, the 1967 Ford GT40 weighed 2,505 and the new 2005 Ford GT weighed 3,350 or basically gained 845 lbs. So even with all of that weight reducing technology in materials and manufacturing you factor the safety standards and daily reliability and it still gained weight.
Dodge worked on it for 21 months and still did not take the weight out of it from the concept but did base it on a proven but heavier platform obviously for time to market and cost savings in development. They could have worked on it for another 6 months and still not reduced anything because they never planned to and because they couldn't without a major redesign of the basic LX platform.
Bottom line is muscle cars were never meant to be light cars but the pony cars were the ligthtest of the bunch for sure. Dodge just wanted to reintroduce a Challenger on a proven reliable platform without having to spend an lot of R&D and just put a big engine to make up for the weight. That is what muscle cars were all about anyways but I like the new Challenger better because it will be good on the drag strip and on the curved roads.
In all it was a good article and he has a great writing style.
Point well made. The issue is that a car of this size that is going to be this safe for this price is going to be heavy and there is no way around it. The fact is Chrysler deserves credit for making it as nimble at driving despite the weight. They made a muscle car and marketed it as a pony car with the capability to compete against pony cars. That is quite an accomplishment.